Is it possible to trigger the share action from within a metro style app without using the charm bar?
It's not really recommended, but there is an API available.
// javascript
Windows.ApplicationModel.DataTransfer.DataTransferManager.showShareUI();
// or C#
Windows.ApplicationModel.DataTransfer.DataTransferManager.ShowShareUI();
More info located # http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows.applicationmodel.datatransfer.datatransfermanager.showshareui.aspx
the recommended way is to open a share contract and do it via charm.
one reason to doing so is that if all developers do it via charm. user will know exactly where to find the share feature across all app and it helps to keep the whole windows 8 ecosystem clean
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I would like to make my AIR desktop browser be the default web browser on a system, how can I go about and do this ?
I would also like to know how I can retrieve the link that has been clicked (in an email for example) to interact with the application.
thanks !
As far as I'm aware this is impossible in AIR. You can associate your app with file types using the air-app.xml descriptor or by calling NativeApplication.setAsDefaultApplication() (Read about it here). Opening files after using either of these methods will trigger your application to launch with an InvokeEvent (Read Here). You can read a good tutorial for this here.
However, if I understand correctly, you also want your app to take over any HTTP requests from inside any other app. To do this you have to override the protocol default application, which requires a registry edit and (I believe) that AIR can't do that. You may be able to write an external script in C or Java to do that for you (This might help with that).
I am working on a Hybrid Application, targeting (for the moment) iOS. Does Worklight have a utility to handle application settings/preferences for iOS? I know how to write the native code to do this, but do not yet know how to gain access to the application settings from the JavaScript. Can anyone point me in the right direction or provide a working example?
In application-descriptor.xml, there is a worklightSettings flag you can set, however the settings page it creates is not user facing. That is, it is meant only for development time, or internal usage, and not production. It allows control of the server address that athe client connects to and change the web resources it will fetch.
So the answer is, no.
The mentioned settings page has set items in it that cannot be altered much (settings.bundle which does not allow much room for play. Maybe you could change it a bit, but doing so would void giving support to you if problems arise). I would recommend against doing so.
So this leaves you the option of creating this on your own. Maybe there is an existing Cordova plug-in that does something similar. Review these training modules of how to incorporate Cordova plug-ins to your application. Cordova bridges between JavaScript to native code, so it could be what you're looking for.
I'm trying to get information about license info of my app and MSDN docs (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh694065.aspx) advice to use Windows.ApplicationModel.Store.CurrentAppSimulator class for that purposes during development/testing and when submitting app to store replace that class with Windows.ApplicationModel.Store.CurrentApp.
I wonder if there is any way to check in code (javascript in my case) if app is already installed from store so my code should use proper class and I won't have to remember every time I submit update of app to store to replacing those classes properly.
As far as I know, I could not find such thing. In fact, LicenseInfo is what provides information about the store listing.
I use a config.js file to keep settings at place which change between development and production. For example - if your app talks to a service, service URL also will likely change between development and production; the service might be running at localhost for development and for production in azure environment. I keep a bool in here and change by hand.
I have not automated it fully. but it is likely possible. need to dig through the msbuild logs for the build created for the store. if there is configuration setting found, then project can have two config.dev.js and config.release.js and msbuild need to conditionally pick the right file. I haven't looked into this yet.
I think I found at solution as described here WinJS are there #DEBUG or #RELEASE directives? . Not ideal, but works for me.
I have read some posts on S/O and also around the web. We are producing a HTML5 JS based web app that runs on the web. We are packaging it up for Google apps, and also for phonegap.
Can we package this app for windows 8? Of course, I appreciate it won't use the windows 8 features. But, will the app run none the less, as it stands. So that we can place it in the store and build out windows 8 features as we move forward.
I appreciate this is a slightly non-concise question, but I guess the real point is what is our quickest route to take our existing HTML 5, CSS, JS App and deploy it in the store and get it working on this platform.
In general, the answer is yes. The transition is not seamless, but you will be able to use a ton, if not all, of the application artifacts in Win8. A good test is if you can run it in IE10, you can run the app as a Win8 app. Again, this is a very broad brush - things you need to worry about are things like all scripts files need to be local (no CDN), changes to web and security contexts, and the fact that Win8 is a horizontal paradigm whereas most web apps are vertical. But in general, you should be able to make the move. Usual caveat - your mileage will vary.
Yes, although not recommended, you can package your existing app for Win8. You'll need to add a few bits of code though. The minimum would be to embed your app's start/init code within WinJS's first promise callback, like so:
args.setPromise(WinJS.UI.processAll().then(function () {
// your init code
}
You'll also need to create a couple of icons for the start screen and an image for your app's launch screen.
It is possible that you'll run into a few issues, like some security related restrictions, where you'll have to modify your code to use some native WinJS functions. This all depends on you app's implementation.
You can also check Microsoft's guidelines for migrating a web app to win8, here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465143
I am trying to store data in a "Metro" App for Windows 8 using IndexedDB.
I would like to be able to browse the database (to monitor that my operations modify the data as intended). So my question is; Is there any way of viewing the actual database of a metro app (IE10)? (something like in Chrome Dev Tools (Resources > IndexedDB))
Regards
The IE team has a blog post Debugging IndexedDB Applications that includes an IDBExplorer module that you can incorporate into your application (for testing, not recommended for production)
Not that I know, but my linq2indexeddb library has a viewer in it. That way you can inspect the content of you database while debugging. The nuget package for Metro apps can be found here. And as last, I have a blogpost on how you can use it.